


Proposing is Serious Business

by FireflySong



Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [7]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Dialogue-Only, Discussions of marriage, F/M, Gen, Serious, in which i rant about the sanctity of engagements and marriage, probably the most serious and least romantic fic about proposing you will ever read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24602944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: Chris has something really important on his mind, so he asks his classmate Toshi for some advice. He gets way more then he bargained for.Written for Day 7: Proposal of the Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge over on tumblr.
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Chris Hartley & Original Character(s)
Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770988
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Proposing is Serious Business

**Author's Note:**

> it's the chrashley proposal fic that no one asked for! basically, i can't remember where i saw it, but i had read somewhere that a proposal should be a surprise, and that an engagement shouldn't be one and its stuck with me ever since. kind of weird that i wrote this topic, mainly because I haven't been in a relationship in ten years, and i have no plans in ever being in one again. but i clearly have a lot of thoughts on it anyway. for those wondering, toshi is actually a character i planned out for a fic that at this time hasn't been posted yet (edit: it has since been posted), but i've been writing for the past couple of months. same with lisa and ryan who are (briefly) mentioned. its not mentioned in the fic, but to give a better idea for context, toshi is japanese, kelly is non-binary african, and juni(per) is their biracial african/japanese daughter.

“...hey, Toshi?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Is it about CRUD operations or RESTful APIs?”

“Well, no. But—”

“Then no.”

“.......”

“......”

“..................”

“Fine.”

“What?”

“I’ve been hearing your sticky keys go off like seven times now. Your mind's clearly not on the assignment. And it’s a little distracting.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry.”

“So, what’s your question?”

“It’s just, well, um, _howdidyouknowwhentherighttimetoproposewas?_ ”

“...yeah, I’m gonna need you to repeat that.”

“Um, how did you know when the right time to propose was?”

“I’m sorry, you were were mumbling a little there. Are you asking me when I proposed?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“...is this about Ashley?”

“No, it’s about the other girl I’ve been madly in love with since middle school. Of course it’s about Ash!” 

“Settle down, Chris, jeez."

"Well, ask a stupid question..."

"I get it already. I just don’t understand why you’re asking me.”

“I mean, you and Kelly have been engaged for like four years now—”

“Five and a half, but who’s counting.”

“—and I don’t really have anyone else that I could ask.”

“What about your parents?”

“I get the idea that they think that me and Ash have always been this, like, inevitability for them. The moment I ask them they’ll probably get super excited and ask if we plan on kids, when the wedding will be, do I have ring or not—”

“Do you have a ring?”

“Well, no, not yet. But I feel like they’re gonna be overly supportive. You feel me?”

“That’s probably a fair point. Haven’t met any of your family, but even I could tell from the first time you introduced Ash to us that you two were completely head over heels for each other. I can barely imagine what it must have been like watching you two as kids with that same besotted look in your eyes.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, what about that one friend of yours? Josh, I think?”

“He would definitely just tease me. I can already hear him telling me to ‘just go in for the kill!’ and that I’m just chickening out. That it took me nearly ten years just to ask her out, and that it’ll probably take another ten years to ask her to marry me.”

“Lisa? Ryan?”

“Lisa isn’t really the best for things like romance. I mean, she’d support me and listen, but she can’t offer a whole lot in the way of advice. And no offense to Ryan, but he’s had like seven different boyfriends in the past couple of years. And he’s been on-and-off with Jesús for as long as we’ve known him. I get the feeling he’s probably not the best person to ask about serious, long-lasting relationships. So, that left you.”

“Honestly, I’m not the right person to ask either. Kelly proposed to _me_.”

“No way! Really?”

“Oh yeah, I had just put Juni to bed, and went to the kitchen in order to put her sippy cup back in the fridge. And when I turned around, Kelly was right there kneeling on the kitchen floor with a ring in their hand. Even after they asked, it still took my brain like a minute to connect the dots.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, one of the best nights of my life. Probably only second to holding Juni in my arms for the first time after she was born. Gotta be honest though, I didn’t realize that you two were that serious.”

“I mean, Ash is the only person I’ve ever really wanted to marry. Has been since before we even got together.”

“And does she know this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does she know that you want to marry her?”

“I think so?”

“I’m going to need a more concrete answer than that, Chris. It’s a yes or no question. You’ve either told her to her face that you want to get married, or you haven’t.”

“Um, yeah. She knows. We’ve talked about it once or twice, mostly as what our plans for the future are. I mean, we’ve never fully discussed it but it’s been pretty implied that we both want a couple of kids in a few more years, once I have a stable job and income and she’s getting money from her books.”

“Alright, that’s a start. Do you know if you’re planning to have a long or short engagement?”

“...that’s a thing we have to worry about?”

“Okay, I’m gonna level with you, Chris. It’s probably a good thing that you came to me first, cause you’re not ready at all to propose.”

“Wait, what? I don’t—”

“Let me finish. Cause if you do propose, if would almost definitely end badly for the both of you. Not right away necessarily, but later down the line. You need to understand something very important here. A _proposal_ is a surprise, an _engagement_ never should be. With an engagement, you need talk things out thoroughly, how long you plan to be engaged, your concrete plans for the future. It’s a process, Chris. And a long one.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret. I love Kelly with all my heart and soul, but we had only been together barely a year before they got pregnant with Juni. And I was so close to proposing when I found out, and again when she was born. But I didn’t because neither of us were ready for that. I didn’t want them to think that I was only doing so out of obligation—which I would have been—and there was always the chance that I would grow to resent them for taking away my choice of being with someone else. Kelly didn’t propose until we spent months talking about it. Until we agreed that though we loved each other very much, we weren’t ready to get married until I finished getting my computer degree and they finished their overseas humanitarian program in Africa. And even then, they didn’t propose until Juni was nearly two years old, and we had been together for three.

“And it’s important to talk about how long you want to be engaged for. A lot of shorter engagements end because they can’t handle the stress of planning for a wedding, getting banking accounts set up, changing their tax info, if maybe they should go in for that prenup after all, that maybe they’re moving too fast. And just as many longer ones die because both parties start to feel that they other doesn’t want it to happen anymore, that they’re starting to stagnate, that they were moving too slow.

“It’s not that I think you’re not serious about Ashley, or that she’s not serious about you, because I don’t think that. At all! Any one with half a brain cell can see that you two are madly in love with each other. It’s almost disgusting to be honest. Oh don’t give me that look, you know I’m right. But you two need to talk about this in more depth, more than just future what-ifs. As crass as it is to say, an engagement is a transaction where you both decide if you’re willing to pay what it takes to stay together for the long-run.”

“I-I guess that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight, Chris, or even in this week. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be this month. But you and Ashley need to sit down and talk about it. And it’s gonna take more than one conversation, it’s gonna take a lot of them, and hours upon hours of talking. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. I do. I really, really do love her, I swear.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m serious about wanting to marry her. I can’t think of a single person I would rather spend my life with.”

“That’s good. Now if that’s everything, can we get back to this assignment? These web APIs aren’t gonna manage themselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...i swear i have a more romantic proposal planned for chrashley. it's just part of a series i plan on doing later and it wasn't going to make sense on it's own like this.


End file.
